Top US Official Murdered After Arkansas Weapons Test Causes Mass Death

EUTimes.net

A shocking report prepared for Prime Minister Putin by the Foreign Military Intelligence Directorate (GRU) states that one of the United States top experts in biological and chemical weapons was brutally murdered after he threatened to expose a US Military test of poison gas that killed hundreds of thousands of animals in Arkansas this past week.

According to this report, John P. Wheeler III, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force, Washington, D.C. from 2005-2008, when he became the Special Assistant to the Acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Logistics and Environment, was found brutally murdered and dumped in a landfill, and as we can read as reported by Fox News:

"Delaware Police are investigating the apparent murder of a former Bush official who also championed the fund-raising effort to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Wheeler's body was found in Wilmington on Friday.

CNN) -- Some of the nation's top experts Tuesday were looking for clues into sudden, mass deaths of birds in two states over New Year's weekend.

"This one is unusual because of the time period over which so many birds died," said LeAnn White, a field investigator with the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin. The center, part of the U.S. Geological Survey, is receiving samples from Arkansas, where as many as 5,000 red-winged blackbirds and starlings fell from the sky in a square-mile area in less than an hour on New Year's Eve, according to the Arkansas Fish and Game Commission.

The center will also examine samples from Louisiana, where 500 red-winged blackbirds, starlings and grackles were found dead in Labarre.

A preliminary report conducted Monday by the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission found that the birds in Beebe, Arkansas, likely died from massive trauma.Dead blackbirds found in yardNo signs of disease found in birdsDead birds fall from skyIt's raining birds

There had been reports of loud sounds in Beebe before the reports of birds falling began to come in. It's possible the sounds made the birds disoriented, and they went into sudden, chaotic flights, crashing into each other and into objects, White said. "You're disturbed, you're disoriented, you're trying to figure out where you are. We have seen some stuff like this before when there's heavy dense fog, and they'll run into towers and power lines," she said.

Other bird experts agree that that's a likely explanation. Still, the sudden deaths are quite unusual. "It's kind of a freak event," said Greg Butcher, director of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society. "You just don't see these kinds of mass deaths very frequently at all."

At this time of year, blackbirds are in huge roosts, particularly throughout the southeastern United States, he said. They generally don't fly at night.

"In the course of a year, about half the birds that are around die -- even under the best circumstances. The life of a bird is brutish and short. But it just usually happens out of the sight of people," said Butcher.

It's possible that the loud sound that triggered the incident was New Year's Eve fireworks, though officials said the investigation is ongoing.

"If it had been any other day of the week," Butcher said, he might have suspected people to be behind the deaths. "There's a lot of purposeful killings. ... People really don't like these big roosts. But I can't see anybody doing that on New Year's Eve."

Doug Inkley, senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation, said his "first suspicion is that they were frightened and went into a mass panic."

"I would call this event unusual," he said, "but not unprecedented."

Keith Stephens, a spokesman for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said the birds showed evidence of trauma in the breast tissue, with blood clots in the body cavity and a lot of internal bleeding. All major organs were normal.

Karen Rowe, an ornithologist for the commission, said such incidents can be caused by a lightning strike or high-altitude hail. A strong storm system moved through the state earlier in the day Friday.

The experts CNN spoke with saw nothing surprising in there being a similar report of bird deaths in Louisiana. "It's another one of those coincidences," said White, adding, "I'm really interested to see if there's anything that could possibly be related. I asked about weather conditions there. There's sometimes high-altitude hail." But, she said, so far officials were not aware of "any strange weather patterns" in the area.

Butcher, with the National Audubon Society, said there may be more reports of dead birds found around the country. "As soon as one of these things hits the airwaves, people are just more sensitive to seeing dead birds around."

A mysterious rain of thousands of dead birds darkened New Year's Eve in Arkansas, and this week similar reports streamed in from Louisiana, Sweden, and elsewhere. (See pictures of the Arkansas bird die-off.)

But the in-air bird deaths aren't due to some apocalyptic plague or insidious experiment—they happen all the time, scientists say. The recent buzz, it seems, was mainly hatched by media hype.

At any given time there are "at least ten billion birds in North America ... and there could be as much as 20 billion—and almost half die each year due to natural causes," said ornithologist Greg Butcher, director of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society in Washington, D.C.

But what causes dead birds to fall from the sky en masse? The Arkansas case points to two common culprits: loud noises and crashes.

Beginning at roughly 11:30 p.m. on New Year's Eve Arkansas wildlife officers started hearing reports of birds falling from the sky in a square-mile area of the city of Beebe. Officials estimate that up to 5,000 red-winged blackbirds, European starlings, common grackles, and brown-headed cowbirds fell before midnight.

Results from preliminary testing released Wednesday by the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, show the birds died from blunt-force trauma, supporting preliminary findings released by the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission on Monday.

"They collided with cars, trees, buildings, and other stationary objects," said ornithologist Karen Rowe of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

"Right before they began to fall, it appears that really loud booms from professional-grade fireworks—10 to 12 of them, a few seconds apart—were reported in the general vicinity of a roost of the birds, flushing them out," Rowe said.

"There were other, legal fireworks set off at the same time that might have then forced the birds to fly lower than they normally do, below treetop level, and [these] birds have very poor night vision and do not typically fly at night."

The dead birds found in Arkansas are of species that normally congregate in large groups in fall or winter. "The record I've heard is 23 million birds in one roost," Audubon's Butcher said.

"In that context, 5,000 birds dying is a fairly small amount."

(Try National Geographic's online bird identifier.)

A Towering Problem for Birds

Birds often hit objects in flight, especially "tall buildings in cities, or cell phone towers, or wind turbines, or power lines," Butcher said.

"The structures that seem to cause the most deaths are very tall and constantly lit," he said. "On foggy nights, birds that should probably normally be paying attention to the stars get disoriented, and circle around the structures until they collapse" and fall.

(Related: "Migrating Birds Reset 'Compasses' at Sunset, Study Says.")

Collisions with power lines seem to have killed roughly 500 blackbirds and starlings in Louisiana on Tuesday. The 50 to 100 jackdaws found on a street in Sweden that same day showed no signs of disease and also apparently died from blunt-force trauma, according to the Swedish National Veterinary Institute.

For example, "last year a couple of hundred pelicans washed up by the Oregon-Washington border," Butcher said. "A cold front had unexpectedly moved in, and they faced icing on their wings and bodies."

(Also see "Bird Color Mysteries Explained.")

Bird-Death Hype Detracts From True Crises?

Of course, death doesn't just stalk birds from above. For instance, "waterfowl get botulism—and salmonella and avian pox can spread at bird feeders," Butcher said.

No matter how it arrives, death appears to be very much a fact of life for birds. "Young birds that hatch in the spring have an approximately 75 percent chance of not reaching their first birthdays," the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's Rowe said.

"To biologists, these deaths are normal occurrences.

"I wish I could take all this energy and attention on these deaths and direct them toward true crises in wildlife biology, to things like the white-nose syndrome in bats," Rowe added.

She does, though, see a silver lining in the sky-is-falling coverage this week.

"I hope we can raise public awareness of what impact man-made structures can have on other species. How many migratory warblers do you want to kill just to get better cell phone reception?"

I have a hard time believing anything that the so-called "experts" have come up with so far, although they are trying harder. In this case, the most fantastic explanation seems to be the most plausible one.

Five thousand blackbirds in Arkansas. One hundred pelicans near Jacksonville, North Carolina. Three hundred doves in Italy. Seventy bats in Tucson, Arizona. Thousands of fish in Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brazil and the United States.

Google is now hosting a map of incidents of mass animal deaths around the world. Google Maps' distinctive blue balloons indicate where the deaths took place. Click on a balloon, and the map provides you with a link to a news report on the incident.

As of Friday afternoon, there were about 30 cases pinpointed on the search engine's mapping site, most of them in the U.S. and Europe.

Some might say it's getting spooky - and not just by conspiracy theorist standards - but experts tell CNN Radio that theories of UFOs and secret government weapons are, naturally, far-fetched.

In the case of the Arkansas blackbirds, wildlife buffs have said that a loud noise or other event may have precipitated the blunt-force trauma that killed the birds. Of all the notions about their deaths, Susie Kesielke, curator of birds at the Los Angeles Zoo, believes the theory that fireworks startled the birds is the most plausible.

“Blackbirds roost communally in the wintertime, and they sleep more soundly than most animals,” Kesielke said, adding that the birds were shocked awake and extremely disoriented.

Jonathan Sleeman, director of the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, said his office has investigated 16 mass bird deaths in the past 20 years.

“This is a bit unusual but not unique,” he explained. “Most of the cases involved pesticides or poison ingested by the birds, but trauma has also been found to be the cause of mass bird deaths."

Good to know experts aren't buying that Armageddon is upon us. Offering even more comfort is the blog Universe Today, which suggests that the deaths aren't so much strange as they are "a symptom of the digital age where news travels faster than you can say, 'The End is Nigh.' "

It cites a Time magazine article that details several strange mass animal deaths and wonders "if the internet age allows us to connect the dots where there are none to be connected."

As for connecting dots, the blog suggests that the map on Google could be laid on top of a "current global oil exploration map to test the hypothesis that the deaths could have been caused by ground-penetrating tomography."

In any case, it seems level heads are prevailing for now - at least until scads of humans succumb to spontaneous combustion.

“Until the sky turns red and there’s a plague of locusts, this event is not that unusual,” Sleeman said of the blackbirds.

Dead Birds in Arkansas and Other Bad Stuff HAARP Has Been Blamed ForJan 4, 2011 – 2:33 PMText SizePrint this page|EmailShare on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on DiggShare on Lifestream

Torie BoschFive hundred dead birds were recently found in Louisiana, just days after thousands of deceased red-winged blackbirds were discovered in Arkansas.

Though biologists haven't yet been able to examine the Louisiana birds and determine what caused their deaths, speculation is running wild. In the past, such bird die-offs have been caused by disease, weather and malnutrition, according to Louisiana's The Advocate.

But the bird-pocalypse has some looking past natural causes and pointing to conspiracy theories. Among those who are wary of the government, the No. 1 suspect is HAARP.

The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, known as HAARP, is a project investigating the upper atmosphere's ionosphere, in hopes that improved communications and surveillance tools can be developed. But HAARP has long ruffled the feathers of conspiracy theorists, who think that the program's research involves experiments with dire consequences for the world, including "death rays" and weather manipulation. It was even the topic of an episode of TruTV's "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura."

So, of course, the bird deaths have the suspicious-minded thinking that HAARP is to blame. Twitter is abuzz with such conjecture.

HAARP (or similar device) may be responsible for recent Bird and Fish deathsIan Brockwell's pictureSubmitted by Ian Brockwell on Sat, 01/08/2011 - 11:20

By Ian Brockwell

Those involved with HAARP will quickly tell you that this project has long been a target for “conspiracy theories” and that their facility in Gakona, Alaska is open to inspection by the public and scientists without security clearance.

This of course is meant to give the impression that there is nothing to hide, but when you consider who funds this project (US Air Force, US Navy and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), is it likely that they would allow just anyone to wander around one of their facilities, unless the real work takes place in a different location?

The authorities tell us that HAARP is designed to “analyze the ionosphere and investigateHAARP facility in Alaska the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance purposes (such as missile detection)”.

HAARP would certainly be able to do that, but what we are not told is what else it is capable of achieving.

If we examine the recent Bird and Fish deaths, it is clear that these happened within a relatively confined space (although these have been seen in many parts of the world). Is it really likely that a few fireworks affected some birds and not others? Could the cold weather have suddenly killed 40,000 crabs (in only one area)?

Is it not more feasible that a powerful radio wave (with quite a narrow beam) produced by the HAARP facility in Alaska, or one of the many other locations where this equipment is available, was carrying out some test?

The Unexplained Explored - Download a copy of the book today!

It is perhaps interesting to note that Birds and Fish were killed in a fairly close proximity to each other in most of the locations where this happened. Imagine if you will a radio wave travelling downwards through the air, its first point of contact would be objects in the sky (Blackbirds can fly at altitudes of up to 2300 meters). It would then travel downwards to the ground or sea! Would this not explain the deaths of creatures flying, on the ground and in the sea? Did these radio wave “beams” kill any creature that crossed its path?

The frequency used by HAARP is capable of penetrating oceans (where it hopes to improve communications with submarines) and is similar to the frequency used in Ultrasound. With the right amount of power (and frequency), the radio waves produced by HAARP could easily be harmful to Birds and Fish (and probably humans).

As I am no scientist, I can only offer ideas and suggestions and hope someone with more technical ability can research this possibility further. Maybe, on the assumption it was a radio wave, it might be possible to trace the location of the signal by matching the locations where dead birds and fish occurred at much the same time (within a 100 mile radius)?

If HAARP is not the culprit, it must be something almost identical to cause such devastation in a very small “selected” area. It is difficult to say whether such a device (or weapon) is land based, or operated from space. Hopefully, with a little further investigation, we will discover the answer to this question.

We and all living things are in balance with mother earth, if you mess with that relationship expect to see a deathly domino effect happen.

HAARP experiments is like saying the kids have found another pack of matches to play with since the early thermal nuclear days.

I see a recipe for disaster god forbid other countries HAARP's secret experiments don't jive together simultaneously with the united states mad scientists experiments like in some more negative ignorant way.

I had about a hundred fish die in one of my aquariums over the weekend. Do I think the government had something to do with it? Hardly. I am pretty sure it was cause of bad water quality! Motto being: sometimes stuff just happens.

The myriad of reasons given for the mass deaths of various species of animals around the world is almost as baffling as the events themselves, lending credence to the notion that something very strange is going on. The list of incidents grows by the day and reaches staggering proportions. We must find an answer, and soon. 43007.jpegThe list of apocalyptic happenings from the end of 2010 to the beginning of 2011 is absolutely staggering:

450 birds dropped out of the sky in Baton Rouge, Lousiana (red-winged blackbirds, cowbirds, grackles and starlings). Why were they flocking together like that?

3,000 red-winged blackbirds in Beebe, Askansas. Why were they flying at night when they are not night-flyers? Why were they flocking as in a migration, when they do not do this?

Thousands of drum fish washed up along a stretch of the Arkansas River some twenty miles long; the explanation was poison but surely that would have been ascertained by now; still no results are available;

Two million small fish dead in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland; the reason they gave was the cold

Thousands of fish in a Florida creek. It cannot have been the cold, the waters were mild;

Dozens of coots (around 200) found dead on a Texas Highway at Big Cypress Creek;

But the killings have not only been in the United States of America. In Stockport, Greater Manchester, England, hundreds of fish have appeared dead on a pond; several other places in north-west England have reported mass fish kills; in southern England, in the county of Kent, 40,000 devil crabs were washed up dead on the sea-shore at Thanet. The reasons given in all these cases were cold weather, but then again it is always cold in Winter and this does not happen;

In Italy, 8,000 doves plummeted from the sky at Faenza. Reason: altitude sickness, poisoning or indigestion caused by greed. Butbirds do not simply crop till they drop;

In New Zealand hundreds of snapper fish were washed up dead on the beach at Coromandel;

In Sweden, 50 jackdaws fell from the sky at New Year;

In Brazil a huge fish kill (100 tons) was discovered between Paranaguá, Antonina and Guaraqueçaba Pontal in Paraná State, leaving hundreds of fishermen destitute. Now surely this cannot have been due to cold water, Brazil is in mid-Summer.

The temperature argument cannot hold water, otherwise it would be valid for all the areas affected. How can some mass kills be due to temperature change when there are low temperatures every winter and when there are kills in warmer areas as well?

One theory being postulated tentatively at present is the shift of the Magnetic North Pole eastwards towards Russia. However, this does not take into account the fact that the magnetic pole is constantly shifting in loops some 50 miles wide every day although the movement does appear to be accelerating and has been doing so for several years.

Could this be the explanation? Certainly it is better than saying birds died of altitude sickness and indigestion through greed...